Energy/Environment

While the frightful weather took a lot of attention this week in Charlotte, up north the fallout continued from a coal ash spill into the Dan River. A broken pipe in a Duke Energy ash pond poured over 30,000 tons of coal ash into the river, until crews plugged it a week ago.This week another pipe failed, releasing wastewater; the justice department began investigating the spill; and environmental groups now say they have found another, unrelated leak from the storage pond that holds the coal ash. WFAE’s Ben Bradford joined All Things Considered host Marshall Terry to discuss the latest.

Duke Energy plans to almost double the amount of solar energy its North Carolina utilities use by the end of next year. The utility has about 350 megawatts of solar in the state right now, the size of a small natural gas or coal plant.

A revised estimate shows less coal ash than previously thought leaked into the Dan River during a spill last week. Duke Energy now says less than 40,000 tons spilled into the river.

When that stormwater pipe burst ten days ago under a Duke Energy ash pond, the company estimated up to 82,000 tons of ash had spilled into the river, or about 8 percent of the entire pond. Water and ash continued to leak throughout the week as crews worked to plug the pipe. Regulators and Duke promised an updated number once the leak was sealed, which occurred early Saturday morning.

After last week’s coal ash spill, which poured at least tens of thousands of tons of the toxic byproduct of burnt coal into the Dan River, state regulators want to delay their own settlement with Duke Energy over its storage of ash at coal plants across North Carolina.

It’s been nearly a week since someone illegally pumped more than a thousand gallons of PCB’s, a toxic chemical, into the Charlotte sewer system. WFAE’s Tom Bullock reports on where the criminal investigation stands and the cleanup the city is facing.

Officials in Charlotte say materials dumped into the sewer system for the second time within a couple of days did not include PCB’s as originally suspected.

Charlotte officials said yesterday that tests indicated that the substance flowing into Sugar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant was ethanol, which is typical of a fuel spill. There is no threat to drinking water. Work crews are inspecting sewer pipes upstream of the Sugar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant where the contamination was found to try locating the source of the problem.

Officials continue to monitor water quality near the site of a coal ash spill from a retired Duke Energy plant on the Dan River in northern North Carolina. WFAE's Duncan McFadyen reports arsenic levels exceeded a state standard earlier this week.

As of Saturday morning, Duke Energy workers have installed a permanent plug at the end of the wastewater pipe. A company representative says the "concrete-like substance" is curing. To keep pressure off of the plug as it cures, wastewater is still being pumped from the pipe and back into the coal ash pond. Crews are still trying to reach the broken part of the pipe under the ash pond. When they do, they plan to fill the full length of the pipe with the same concrete-like material.

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Workers have temporarily stopped the flow of ash and water into the Dan River on the border of North Carolina and Virginia, and plan to permanently patch the leak overnight.

Water test results are starting to come in from the part of the Dan River affected by a coal ash spill at a retired Duke Energy plant on the border of North Carolina and Virginia. WFAE’s Duncan McFadyen reports early results are in.